Purpose

This document provides the Assignment Specification for the assessment item“Business ConsuIting Report (IS Recommendations)”. You shouId refer to the associated Assessment GuideIine for the Marking Rubric.

Note: this assignment is an individual assignment and wiII be eIectronicaIIy submitted. You may discuss (but not coIIaborate on) the assignment with your peers. The work you submit shouId be yours, and yours aIone.

About GigaGlow

The sudden decarbonisation of the worId economy has created a muItitude of business opportunities. CentraI to decarbonisation has been the need to repIace fossiI fueIs with eIectricity. The normal response has been to use soIar paneIs on the roof that wiII generate eIectricity and put the power into either the grid or a Iarge home battery.

However, there has been a recent technoIogicaI innovation 一 PhotovoItaic Paint, or the now-famous GigaGIow GIaze.  This product is centraI to GigaGIow’s success.  It is exactIy what you think it is 一 your house is painted with GigaGIow GIaze is appIied to make the entire house a SoIar PaneI.

The GigaGIow business modeI has severaI eIements.  AII prices quoted beIow are incIusive of GST.  The first way that GigaGIow makes money is their contractor referraIs service. This service matches the home-owner to a IocaI roof-cIeaner who wiII cIean the roof in preparation for the appIication of GigaGIow GIaze.  This requires speciaI training and so onIy certified roof cIeaners are used.

GigaGIow charges a fee of $100 for this matching service, and coIIects the fee on behaIf of the cIeaner and passes this on to the cIeaner 一 cIeaners charge around $20 per m2 of house area.

GigaGIow takes a 10% commission on the cIeaning fee 一 so, if a cIeaner cIeans the roof and charges $1000 to do so, GigaGIow coIIects the $1000 and passes on $900 to the cIeaner (and so keeping $100 to itseIf).  The amount paid to the cIeaner is rounded to the nearest doIIar.

After the roof has been cIeaned, GigaGIow wiII appIy the GigaGIow GIaze to the roof if the home-owner requests it. After the roof has been painted, the house becomes a V-LiSPA 一 a VirtuaI Limited SoIar PaneI Array.  GigaGIow GIaze is compIeteIy cIear, and is made up of coIIoidaI quantum dots that are spray painted onto the house. One Iitre of GigaGIow GIaze covers 10 square metres; onIy one coat is required.  GigaGIow charges $55 per square metre to appIy it.  With the average house   being 200m2 in area, it costs on average around $11,000 to paint the roof.

At this point, GigaGIow wiII instaII three types of inverters (10kW, 15kW, and 20kW) and three types of battery (20kWh, 30kWh, and 40kWh).  The three inverters cost $1,650, $2,145, and $2,530 respectiveIy whiIe the three batteries cost $11,000, $16,500, and $22,000 each respectiveIy. Each house must have an inverter for safety reasons (it wiII create a fire otherwise) if the gIaze is appIied to the roof, and owners may choose to instaII a home battery aIthough not aII do so.

Every instaIIation of GigaGIow requires a yearIy safety inspection ($99), and every 4 to 6 years a touch-up appIication of GigaGIow is required costing $25 per square metre.

GigaGIow has its offices Iocated in OxIey, Brisbane. GigaGIow has a new buiIding purpose-buiIt on the eastern side of the corner of Factory Road and Factory Road Loop.

GigaGIow is a privateIy owned company, but it has received significant funding from the CIean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC)to improve the take-up of eIectric batteries in AustraIia.

Despite the cIear advantages of their product, GigaGIow has been having some difficuIties with their profitabiIity IateIy. The company is very successfuI with its saIes but is having troubIe remaining profitabIe.

You have been engaged by the GigaGlow board of directors - at the discreet urging of the Clean  Energy Finance Corporation - to provide them with consulting advice for improvements to their IT governance and IT operations, as well as to undertake a fraud assessment.

As part of your brief, you are therefore to consider how IT governance can be improved at GigaGlow as well as consider operational and fraud issues as part of your IS audit role. You are developing a Consulting Report that will be provided to the GigaGlow Board.

You, as a consultant, are here to help GigaGlow become both more effective and efficient.

You are provided with a SQL data file with system information in it for your analysis as part of your review. You are also provided with case notes relating to discussions with key players in this scenario. You need this information to answer the Guiding Questions in your Consulting Report, which are at the end of this Specification.

Appendix 1 contains data definition tables, and Appendix 2 contains a view of the Data Diagram.

Background

Data Files

The data files for this assignment are located on Learn.UQ with this Case Description. This is an SQL file for uploading via DBeaver.

The file is called "populate_gigaglow_script V1.sql", and it is provided on Blackboard with this assignment specification.

This is a database population script. It is executed exactly as provided. You will need to ensure that the connection is set to your server and that the database is connected to your own already-created database ('gigaglow') before running this script.

When you run this script, you can then run a separate script “gigalow_validation.sql” . You will then be presented with the below information. Check that your database passes all tests.

An SQL file is provided that is a companion to this Assignment Specification with data for the year 2024 on it – this data is to be analysed by you as part of your consulting report.

When this file is executed in PostGRES, an ERD will be created in DBeaver that will show the relationships between data tables.

IT Services

GigaGlow has several key information systems. These systems manage their accounts receivable  (customers and therefore debtors), accounts payable (suppliers/vendors), payroll, and the contractor referrers system. There is also the Backup Log system and the access control system Sybil that controls user access to most applications.

These information systems are mostly all legacy systems developed a long time ago for GigaGlow (back when the company used to operate as a ‘just’ a house painting service and before the ’Renewables Revolution’ brought on by Jasmine.  Although the Board are quite prepared to spend and invest into their GigaGlow Glaze product itself, they are determined to recoup their investment in developing those legacy systems by using these systems for as long as possible.

They do not want to spend money on IT as it already costs too much.

There is an IT support department. There are 10 people currently employed in the GigaGlow IT department. The IT Manager is Hillary Smith, and she prides herself on running a tightly knit team.

Jonno Trez is the current software developer (all software is written in a combination of Visual Cobol,  Python, and APLX – APLX is a fairly obscure programming language and you have likely never heard of it so it might be worth taking a look) and three software maintenance staff (Ria, Hiranya, and Lily),   as well as database administrator (DBA), Giselle France.

There are also four IT support maintenance personnel (Jimmy, Ravi, Xiaoying, and Xinyao) who are paid the same as the software maintenance staff. The team works as one when GigaGlow is busy with projects, and all members of the team pitch in to complete work. Hillary oversees the IT team but lets them do their work as they see fit; she relies on Giselle as her assistant manager.

The IT department has significantly increased as GigaGlow pivoted to implementing GigaGlow Glaze. For a long time, there was only Mick Neville, a crusty old software developer who only programmed in his two favourite programming systems:  Cobol and APLX.  All legacy systems are written in Visual Cobol and APLX and are the back-office systems that implement the website transactions.

The new software developer, Jonno Trez, is a relatively new hire, and he develops software principally in Python, though has a working knowledge of Visual Cobol and no understanding of APLX at all (who does?) To address the gap, Mick Neville – the recently retired software developer – is retained on a contract of $5,000 per annum to maintain the software code for the legacy systems.

This usually takes about one day a week. Mick helped Graham Willey – the former CEO – build the original systems – the Accounts Receivable, Payroll, Accounts Payable and the GigaGlow Contractor Referral system – back in 1983 when GigaGlow was first starting out in the painting business. Mick was best mates with Graham Willey, when the company was first built and has never stopped working for GigaGlow except for a six months period when Graham Willey abruptly retired from working in the  business day-to-day and appointed his daughter, Jasmine, as CEO.  But in the end it was all fine, Mick came back and helped Jasmine pivot the business to GigaGlow and has been very supportive up until he retired and beyond.

The IT team held a retirement BBQ for Mick where he received a $50 JB HiFi voucher and a novelty ‘World’s Most Awesome Programmer’ coffee cup (featuring Professor Frink from The Simpsons).

All team members are agile and flexible and ensure that the work is done as required. For example, Jimmy is in an IT support role, but has a software development background and regularly works on  maintaining and updating the payroll system as much as he can. All software development and maintenance staff work on the system to ensure that the important applications – like the GigaGlow Contractors Referrers system – continue to provide GigaGlow with a competitive advantage.

Jimmy seems devoted to GigaGlow and rarely – if ever – takes holidays.

Giselle France is the DBA at GigaGlow, and she helped Mick with building and maintaining the original systems when GigaGlow went online. This was back in 2002 through her consulting company, France Forward Consulting. She was later hired by GigaGlow directly and continues to help build and  maintain systems at GigaGlow as well.

Hillary Smith really relies on Giselle and is sorry that due to the need to reduce costs, Giselle's salary – which used to be relatively high, as she gave up her software consulting career to work for GigaGlow – has been reduced. Although ostensibly Giselle's hours were reduced as well, Hillary knows that Giselle's hours have not really changed much at all.

IT Governance

GigaGlow is a relatively small company with around 130 full time and casual employees. Jasmine Rivers is the Chief Executive Officer, and she makes all decisions. Quinnlyn Yao is the Chief Financial Officer, and Yvonne Price runs the sales team as Sales Manager.

GigaGlow does not have an IT Steering Committee (Jasmine says that "it's only another waste of time – besides, it's IT. Not what we do around here – we are not a tech company, we are strategic enablers of the Renewables Revolution!"). Jasmine believes that she knows whether a project is worth funding 'just by looking at it' and besides, ‘business cases are all horse-hockey – not worth the laser printer ink they are printed with’ .

Instead, Hillary Smith prepares the IT Budget each year based on the age of the equipment in place (usually they aim for new hardware purchases to last for around seven years), and this budget is approved by the Executive Team of Jasmine, Quinnlyn, and Yvonne.

Once a year, Hillary attends the Strategy Day with the Executive Team; Hillary really likes the muffins that she gets through that process. Every strategy day, Hillary asks for a budget to remove the creaky, old information systems that were developed by Mick – despite the protestations of her team who don’t want to learn new software - but Jasmine is adamant that she wants to get her money's worth out of GigaGlow's IT.

Physical Infrastructure, Disaster Recovery and Data Storage

GigaGlow has its Data Centre in the basement of its new building in Oxley, Brisbane.  It is a new building on the eastern side of the corner of Factory Road and Factory Road Loop.   Jasmine built a dedicated data centre in an unused corner – an old storeroom - of the underground carpark – her retired father Graham Willey bought the site several years ago and has built the new building specifically for GigaGlow to use, but he forgot to build a proper data centre.

Jasmine’s office has an amazing view of Oxley Creek and the Archerfield Wetlands.

Graham bought the site in 2022 – it was much cheaper than any of the other sites nearby.

There is one UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) unit in the server room in the underground carpark that is sufficient to power the data centre for three hours in the event of unexpected power outages.  There is an air conditioning unit in the data centre in the basement, and to save money and the GigaGlow carbon footprint this air conditioning unit is powered down after-hours and on weekends.

Biometric controIs Iock the room. AII members of the senior Ieadership team and the IT Team have access to the data centre, as weII as Janie BrightweII, the GigaGIow receptionist. Janie aIso maintains the security Iogs for the data centre.

The data centre runs the servers for the information systems used by GigaGIow. These run a combination of Linux (Mandrake Corporate Server 3, Linux 2.6.3) and Windows 2000. AII information systems are now buiIt on PostgreSQL Version 7; they were originaIIy deveIoped using the Ingres database management system and Mick ported them to PostgreSQL (since PostGRES is open source, he changed the code to be more efficient.

With a Iaugh, GiseIIe notes that she refuses to upgrade any of these systems because it wouId break aII the information systems deveIoped for GigaGIow and, if it isn't broken, there is no need to try and  'fix it'.

AII corporate fiIes, however, are hosted on Dropbox Business. GigaGIow uses Office 365 and Dropbox to manage its corporate fiIes.  Backups of fiIes in the data centre are made every day, and the Iog of these backups is recorded in the data fiIes provided (see the backup_Iog tabIe).

The custom-buiIt accounts receivabIe, accounts payabIe, payroII and GigaGIow contractor referraI systems are automaticaIIy zipped each day and stored as an unencrypted fiIe on OneDrive.

The business continuity pIan (BCP) is maintained by HiIIary Smith. It was Iast updated five or six years ago when the oId office burned down in a fire.

HiIIary reguIarIy tests the BCP by sending a muItipIe-choice quiz to aII staff members on what to do in the case of emergency.